NBA Cleveland Cavaliers

Mike Miller Says David Blatt’s Offense Is “Borderline Genius”

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By @TheSizzle20

David Blatt

Ken Blaze – USA Today Sports Images

The Cleveland Cavaliers have a new man calling the shots as they head into the 2014-15 NBA season. While LeBron James is stealing all of the headlines with his return home—and rightfully so—it’s new head coach David Blatt that will be drawing up the plays and coaching his trio of stars in hopes of bringing an NBA Championship to Cleveland.

Blatt comes into his first NBA head coaching gig with a ton of experience overseas and at the international level. He was wildly successful as the head coach of Maccabi Tel Aviv and also led the Russian National Team to a gold and bronze medal at FIBA Eurobasket in 2007 and 2011, respectively, as well as the bronze medal in the 2012 Olympics.

The question with Blatt, though, is how his coaching will translate in the NBA. You can look at what he did with Russia and while coaching overseas and assume it will look similar to that, but he’s also never had to coach and manage the amount of talent that he has with guys like LeBron, Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving all on the same roster.

Though we don’t wholly know what to expect from Blatt, he’s garnering high praise from his players as the Cavs get ready to enter the preseason. When asked about his new head coach, veteran wing Mike Miller praised Blatt’s offense, calling it “borderline genius.”

Reddit NBA had some fun with the comment, simplifying the offensive scheme to “Just pass to LeBron!” While that’s almost surely a huge part of their offense, it’s a relatively big deal for Miller to be singing that high of praise. Miller is a guy who has been around the league for a while, a guy who has played with LeBron before, and a guy who knows a thing or two about offense. A player like that calling an offense “genius” certainly holds some merit.

We’ll have to wait another week or so to see just how Blatt’s offense looks and how he can get his trio of stars to gel with one another. However, the players are pretty clearly on-board with what he’s instituting in Cleveland. Things were already looking up for the Cavaliers given their immense talent, but if Blatt’s offense is as quality as his players are saying it is, they could be on the verge of something historic.

Cody Williamsis a Senior Writer with Rant Sports. Follow Cody on Twitter @TheSizzle20, add him on Google and like his Facebook page.

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